Dreams, psychos and zombies: a ROW80 update

Do you remember the band Fleetwood Mac? I keep getting their songs in my head recently. Both their songs ‘Go Your Own Way‘ and ‘Dreams‘ particularly.

I do love these songs. They remind me of long drives on the motorway with the sun streaming through the windows and a book in my lap whilst the rest of the family chattered away amongst themselves. Sometimes there were sweets or chocolate too! The joys of family trips…

I was thinking of the song ‘Dreams’ earlier as I mulled over my week. This verse in particular:

Now here I go again, I see, the crystal visions
I keep my visions to myself
It’s only me
Who wants to wrap around your dreams and
Have you any dreams you’d like to sell?
Dreams of loneliness…
Like a heartbeat drives you mad…
In the stillness of remembering

It’s been an odd week. I never heard back from the job interview I went for, so I’ve been sulking over that for a start. I’ve been in a bit of a funk over a bunch of things really as work’s been driving me nuts with so many people with bad attitudes being there. Not being able to make time to see a friend or develop new friendships due to the crappy hours I do work. And then there’s my odd sleeping patterns… I don’t seem to be able to sleep right through at the moment, and I’ve been having some really weird dreams. Not the kind of dreams that normally leads to a good little story outline, but there’s most definitely been an interesting character that’s come out of the latest one: baby-faced psychos are totally the way forward. Right? Right.

That aside… Let’s get down to business.

Firstly I wanted to say a big “Thank You” to the fabulous people from ROW80, IWSG and other creatives who have stopped by and posted words of wisdom and encouragement. I really appreciate it! Also, thank you to Shanjeniah for the link-back on her latest update.

You know, I’m actually quite impressed with myself overall this week. I haven’t checked off everything on my to-do lists but there has definitely been a marked improvement.

I’m now up to 16 / 100 pages on my script WIP ‘Lost in the Dark‘. Given that I only started working on this on Wednesday, I’m really happy with this progress and definitely feel the 25 page goal per week is achievable. I was watching one of my favourite films the other day called ‘Hocus Pocus’ with a critical eye. I wanted to see if I could fit the bits and pieces to the beat sheet I’m working with and roughly at what points they come in. Happy to say I think I’m getting the hang of it. The film ran to 88 minutes (each film minute equates to roughly one page of script), so I definitely have some wiggle room if I’m aiming for 100 pages of draft.

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, I’m booked onto an all-day script writing workshop on the 8 March 2014! I really can’t wait. I’m definitely picking things up as I go along, as well as reading guides and advice around writing which is really helping to see what I need to come back to, but it’ll be great to get some real feedback and see how things can be improved with having some tuition on development, dialogue, format and so on… If anyone’s from or around Manchester (UK), let me know if you plan on attending ‘Script Writing North‘ (formerly ‘Primary Creations’) too!

I also received my grade from my latest English assignment on transcription conventions – 84%! I’m so happy! I received lots of positive feedback and ways to improve to push to a pass 1 on the next assignment, as my tutor’s confident I can do it. I really am surprised I did that well though as I was not so confident at the point of submission.

I’ve not really been keeping up with the ‘free’ learning courses through FutureLearn at the moment, but I’m going to crack on with those today. My aim is to get a bunch of articles read and contribute to a couple of discussions on the #FLsustain course, particularly since we moved onto sustainable learning which should be interesting. And then I can move onto a chunk of the activities on #FLHamlet. I just want to pull things back to a manageable point as I don’t want to fall so far behind that I give up on it. I don’t like giving up – doesn’t sit well with me at all.

The plans to be more active, even if only for short periods each day, are hit and miss since I don’t include work in that. Some days I stick to it, other days I don’t. It’s getting better though as the days I do stick with it are more frequent than the ‘not’ days. We’re getting there! At least I’m maintaining my current weight, rather than gaining as usually happens when I’m in a bit of a funk…

As mentioned in a previous post, I received some books I ordered that I want to start working on. I don’t want to set time frames for them yet as I still have the Ibsen book ‘A Doll’s House, and other plays‘ to finish (I did plan on reading that by the end of Jan, so I have to catch up there!) and a fiction book called ‘I, Zombie’ by Jo Michaels to finish on my Kindle and review. The books I bought are self-help type books though, so I can probably fit little chunks in here and there. One being ‘Money: A love story‘ by Kate Northrup, and the other being ‘Blink‘ by Malcolm Gladwell. I want to work on Kate’s first as I believe that will be most useful to help me feel more ‘in control’ and organised. I also picked up one of Kait Nolan’s ‘Meet Cute’ stories called ‘Once Upon a Snow Day‘ to read through. I haven’t actually read any of her published works yet, as embarrassing as that is to say, so we’re going to change that!

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2 thoughts on “Dreams, psychos and zombies: a ROW80 update”

I think you are doing really well in keeping up with all the reading and writing and good for you for no weight gain. It’s tough when one can’t sleep but I hope the stresses you are feeling right now can be lessoned with things you enjoying doing